I’m From Tennessee. The State’s Coronavirus Response Is Both Frightening and Embarrassing.

FILE - In this Monday, March 16, 2020, file photo, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee answers questions concerning the state's response to the coronavirus during a news conference in Nashville, Tenn. Mark Humphrey/AP

The coronavirus is a rapidly developing news story, so some of the content in this article might be out of date. Check out our most recent coverage of the coronavirus crisis, and subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily newsletter.

In my home state of Tennessee, the Department of Health has made one of the most depressing asks of the pandemic: It has advised doctors and nurses to seek out swim goggles and diapers to fashion into masks. 

Tennessee primary care physician Sonal Gupta recounted the low point of a webinar hosted by the department in which doctors like herself and her husband, an anesthesiologist, heard the suggestion that they “use bandannas, scarves and even diapers in place of face masks and swim goggles or safety goggles in place of eye shields,” according to the Associated Press. She says her husband has been told to wash and reuse his eye mask (under normal circumstances, he replaces a used mask with a new one frequently). 

This is the same state where the governor, Bill Lee, who has been in office since the 2018 midterms, declined to issue a stay-at-home order on Thursday in spite of pleas from medical professionals in Tennessee. (Though, thankfully, several mayors in the state have opted to fill in the gaps.) Instead, he placed his confidence in a sing-songy rhyme that will do nothing except lodge itself in people’s minds as a meaningless earworm: “Do your part, stay apart.” Mr. Lee, this is not the eighth-grade dance, where you must leave room for the Holy Spirit during the slow songs. It’s a damn pandemic, one that is particularly dangerous in your state, where 13 rural hospitals have shuttered since 2012. Tennessee ranks in the top 10 of US states for deaths caused by all sorts of things, according to the CDC; it ranks third in flu and pneumonia deaths. 

I have a dog in this fight. My parents live in Tennessee. My dad, who is and has been the sole economic provider in my family for the vast majority of my life, has to keep going to work or risk losing his job. Several times a day, I am paralyzed by the terror that rushes up through my bones into my brain that one of them will fall ill, and there won’t be a thing I can do about it. I won’t be able to get to them. I won’t be able to advocate for them effectively from afar. I do not trust the hospital they would go to for care. I have spent the past two weeks jumping every time the Google alert I have set for their county and the words “coronavirus” or “COVID-19” goes off. I have spent hours on the phone with my folks, begging them to take this seriously and to take every precaution available to them. I have watched closely as the numbers in Tennessee have ticked up to nearly 1,000 confirmed cases, knowing that there are certainly more than that. I heard the governor of Kentucky, Andy Beshear, advise his people not to go to Tennessee because of the rapid acceleration of the virus there. Only Georgia and Louisiana’s numbers lead Tennessee’s in the Southeast right now.

How can I think, how can I breathe, how can I bear to be in California, 2,000 miles away from family and from my home, when things are so royally fucked that the Department of Health is advising doctors to shield themselves from infection using diapers and swim goggles? The answer is, of course, that I have no choice. 

I do, however, have a question: How in the actual hell would one MacGyver a diaper into a face mask? 

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate